Brian Acton

Brian Acton, born on February 17, 1972, is a prominent American engineer, entrepreneur, and computer scientist. He is best known for co-founding WhatsApp, a revolutionary mobile messaging application, alongside Jan Koum in 2009. This innovative platform caught the attention of Facebook, which acquired it in February 2014 for a staggering nineteen billion dollars.

After his tenure at WhatsApp, Acton departed in September 2017 to focus on a new venture: the Signal Foundation. He co-founded this organization with Moxie Marlinspike in 2018, aiming to promote privacy and security in digital communication. Currently, he serves as the executive chairperson of the Signal Technology Foundation and holds the position of interim chief executive officer of Signal Messenger LLC.

Before his groundbreaking work in messaging applications, Acton honed his skills at Yahoo!, where he gained valuable experience in the tech industry. His contributions to technology and communication have not gone unnoticed; in 2020, Forbes recognized him as the 836th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of two point five billion dollars.